Mankind has been concerned about health and longevity since time
immemorial. Medical systems are in fact a vignette of whatever myth of
disease and causation is held at the time. While today’s material
science reigns supreme in the populace’s consciousness, including the
doctors and the pharmacists, there is occasionally a glimmer of hope
for humanity from those who live the longest as to ‘the secret’ of
their longevity.

Harry Patch celebrated his 110th birthday on the 17th June 2008. He is
the last surviving ‘Tommy’ from the Great War. Having fought in the mud
of Flanders at Passcherdaele where 300,000 allied soldiers died, one
could say he’s lucky to have seen through the conflict. Mr Patch, who
lives in Wells, Somerset, said: “I neither smoke, drink nor gamble. The
three sins, leave them alone… I feel about 50. Fresh air, no petrol and
no cars, that’s the secret.” [1]

Are these six things the whole truth? Others centenarians have imbibed
and puffed, but one must admit there is something to consider. The
gambling is most poignant: his refusal to indulge in this shows his
living according to the principle of acceptance of one’s own abilities
to create fortune, or the acceptance of what one has.

It’s the fresh air, how can one not agree with this? But no petrol, no
cars? I once crossed a continent in a plane and concluded that movement
faster than a horse can carry you is contrary to health. The changes
caused to the subtle body distort thinking, metabolic and circulatory
functions. Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT) is one such result of travelling
faster than the horse and cart at about 7 miles per hour. How fast does
that aeroplane take you?

Petrol is the modern slave. The Roman civilisation collapsed, it is
contended by some, because it ran out of slave labour. Petrol does the
work which humans did and can do and will need to do once again. Work
is therapeutic. It balances the detrimental effects that thinking has
on the body. Work is yoga, unifying one with the universe. Petrol is
also a poison. We do not have petrol engines operating in our homes and
do not have the exhaust fumes piped into the car because we like the
smell.

Certain schools of thought consider that petrochemicals are also the
cause of a modern miasm – a taint like Hahnemann’s miasms of Psora,
Sycosis and Syphilis [2] forming new potentials for disease. There are
plenty of new diseases emerging. Petroleum products (the entire
industrial world is based on petrochemicals) have seeped into
everything, inside and around us.

I don’t wish to remove the challenge of living we now face, but is
anyone up for an experiment (a rigorous, controlled double-blind trial
no less) of clean fresh air, no cars, no petrol, no smoking or
drinking, no more trips to William Hill to place your bet?